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Friday, April 22, 2016

A Whiff of Swedish Sin

by Anna Belfrage

Back in the 1960s, Sweden – and in particular its women –
acquired a reputation for being somewhat over-generous with their sexual
favours. Nothing new under the sun, if you ask me, and today’s post will
hopefully prove my point by introducing you to two very handsome Swedish counts, their
utterly ravishing sister, and the younger count’s one and only love – who
unfortunately happened to be married elsewhere. Swedish sin? I see some of you
frown, wondering just how this can play a role in British history. Bear with me…

The 17th century was one of huge Swedish
expansion – for a while. With more lands at their disposal, Swedish nobles took
the opportunity of wiping the oh, so boring dust of their homeland from under
their feet and instead set out to explore what Europe had to offer. As polyglot
back then as Swedes are now – for the same reason: no one but us speaks Swedish
– these my distant countrymen established themselves in many of the smaller
European courts – with a preference for all those very small principalities
that made up present day Germany.

Aurora - in a blonde wig

One such Swedish family in happy exile was the von
Köningsmarcks. The father, Kurt Christoffer, was the son of a decorated Swedish
Field Marshal. The mother, Maria Christina von Wrangel, was of impeccable
Swedish lineage, and the children, Carl Johan, Aurora, Amalia and Philip Christoffer,
were all four drop-dead gorgeous. For Aurora, this would offer a heady if short
career as preferred mistress to the future Augustus I of Poland. Being
possessed not only of astoundingly good looks but also of brains, Aurora was wise
enough not to cling when Augustus tired of her. Instead, she had him set her up
for life as the princess-abbess of a nice little convent – this came with the
perk of a solid income and a princely title and, apparently, little in the way
of religious obligations.

Maurice de Saxe

I would say that the best thing that came out of Aurora’s illicit
affair with Augustus was their stunningly handsome son, Maurice de Saxe, a
future Marshal of France. And seeing as Augustus had presence rather than
beauty, we must assume this was all due to the Köningsmarck genes. Maybe in
this portrait of Maurice we get an inkling of what his maternal uncles, Carl
Johan and Philip Christoffer, may have looked like.

Pretty Elizabeth Percy

The eldest of the Köningsmarck siblings, Carl Johan, led an adventurous
life which included being a Maltese Knight, fighting the Ottomans, and lion hunting in Africa. At some point, he fell head-over-heels in love with the pretty
and very young English noblewoman Elizabeth Percy, and so determined was he to
wed her (and, I am sad to say, get his hands on her money) that he arranged for
her husband, a certain Thomas Thynne, to be murdered in February of 1682.
Thynne had been out partying with the Duke of Monmouth (yes, that Duke of
Monmouth) and was shot dead in his carriage by three Swedish men acting upon
Carl Johan’s orders. The three Swedes were duly hanged, but having offered
invaluable services to England in Morocco some years earlier, Carl Johan was
instead invited to a private audience with Charles II and then allowed to
escape the country. He then went on to create yet another scandal when he
enticed another English lady to run away with him to Venice disguised as his
page. Those Swedes, hey?

I imagine big brother Carl Johan had quite the influence on
Philip Christoffer. Alternatively, our Philip was an entirely different
creature, which is why when he met a certain Sophia Dorothea of Celle in 1681, he
fell in love. At the time, Philip Christoffer would have been around sixteen
and Sophia Dorothea was a mere fifteen. They flirted mildly, and Philip Christoffer
went on to do his tour of Europe. No such tour for Sophia Dorothea. Instead in
November of 1682 she was wed to Georg Ludwig of Hanover, a young man six years
or so her senior. In due course, Georg Ludwig was to become George I of Great
Britain.

Georg Ludwig in his younger days

This was an unhappy marriage from day one. Georg’s mother – Sophia of the Palatine, granddaughter of James I& VI and the lady through
which Georg Ludwig would eventually claim the British throne – despised her
little daughter-in-law for being born on the wrong side of the blanket (Sophia
Dorothea was the legitimised offspring of her father’s union with his long-time
mistress) and as to Georg, he was just as unenthusiastic.

However, Sophia Dorothea came with a nice annual income, and
she was pretty enough not to require Georg to squish his eyes shut when doing
his duty in the marital bed, so soon enough there was a little son, Georg
Augustus. Some years later, there was a daughter, but by then the marriage was
more or less dead, with Georg entertaining himself elsewhere, primarily with
Melusine von der Schulenburg, his long-time mistress to whom he would remain
devoted throughout his life.

Sophia Dorothea

As to Sophia Dorothea, her interactions with her husband
mostly took the forms of arguments – at times physical – with him complaining
about everything she did, how she talked, how she ate, how she carried
herself…Add to this the humiliation of having her husband’s mistress at close
quarters, and one imagines Sophia Dorothea’s life was not exactly a rose
garden. No wonder she was ripe for the wooing when in 1688 Philip Christoffer
von Köningsmarck reappeared in her life, as dashing as she remembered him, but
by now an experienced man of the world.

The Hanover court did not only consist of pig-headed (as
per his mother in one of her exasperated moments) Georg Ludwig. He had brothers and sisters, and Sophia Dorothea
was not entirely without friends – even less so when Philip Christoffer began to
frequent the court, a boon companion to Georg Ludwig’s younger brothers. Over
the coming two years, Sophia Dorothea and Philip Christoffer met regularly –
almost daily – but at this point nothing indicates this was anything but a
sweet romance, a young woman starved for affection flirting with a handsome
admirer.

Still, the infatuation was noted. Not that Georg Ludwig gave
a fig about what his wife might be doing, but he wasn’t about to have her
openly mooning over some fresh-faced Swedish count. So I dare say it was with
something akin to relief that the Hanoverian court waved bye-bye to Philip Christoffer
as he rode off to fight in a campaign on the Peloponnesus.

Philip Christoffer

However, Philip Christoffer returned. And this time – at
least to judge from the correspondence between Philip Christoffer and Sophia
Dorothea – innocent love flamed into passion. The ignored princess bloomed, and
soon enough “everyone” knew she was entertaining Philip Christoffer more
intimately than she should. As a pre-emptive measure, Philip Christoffer was therefore exiled from Hanover.

Georg Ludwig, huge hypocrite that he was, was utterly
incensed. The unloving couple fought like cats and dogs, she shrieking at him
that who was he to come and wag a moral finger at her, what with his mistresses
with whom he openly cavorted, while he yelled that it was different, he was a
man, and by God, she’d best be a dutiful wife, or else… (Okay, okay, some
artistic license here. After all, I wasn’t there) Apparently, Georg Ludwig did
not shy from physical violence and had to be dragged off when he attempted to
strangle her.

Whatever the case, Sophia Dorothea was becoming desperate –
and afraid. Philip Christoffer agreed, and so the two lovers came up with a
drastic solution: she would flee the Hanoverian court and they would live happily
ever after, poor but together. An escape plan was formulated and in early July
of 1694, Philip Christoffer dared a visit to his lady love so as to go over the
final details of their plan. They spent some hours closeted in her rooms, and
under cover of the dark Philip Christoffer slipped away, shrouded in a heavy
brown cloak. And that, dear people, is the last time anyone saw the love-sick
count.

The Hanoverian court went into a frenzy covering all tracks
that could potentially lay the blame for Philip Christoffer’s disappearance –
or should that be murder? – at their door. Georg Ludwig immediately initiated
divorce proceedings against his wife, citing her “abandonment” of him as the
reason rather than his own repeated infidelities.

Sophia Dorothea with her children, around
the time she was banished.

In 1694, Sophia Dorothea was forcibly removed from her home
and her children and effectively imprisoned at the picturesque castle of Ahlden.
While given the run of the manorial gardens, her movements elsewhere were
severely restricted, as was access to her person. She was never to see her
children again, remaining an isolated prisoner living off her memories until
her death thirty-three years later.

In 1714, Georg Ludwig succeeded to the British crown as
George I. His new subjects wanted not only a king but also a queen – and neither of
their new king’s mistresses made much of an impression, one being nicknamed “The
Maypole” the other “The Elephant”. Prospective wives turned him down, and so –
or so the story goes – someone was desperate enough to approach Sophia Dorothea
and ask her if she would consider coming over to England. Her purported response
was as follows: “If I truly deserve to be punished as I have been these last
two decades, then I am not worthy of being your queen. If I am innocent, then
your king is not worthy of being my husband.” Nice and ambiguous, one could say…

In 1726, Sophia Dorothea fell seriously ill. In her
death-throes she cursed her erstwhile husband, prophesising that it would not
be long before they met before the throne of God, and then they’d see… She died
in November of 1726, and George forbade any signs of mourning in Hanover or
England, was mightily irritated when his daughter in Prussia hanged her halls in
black. In keeping with his character, he therefore ordered that his former wife
be buried “somewhere in the castle garden” with none of the funeral honours a
lady of her rank deserved.

Ahlden as per an engraving from the mid 17th century

The weather, however, conspired against him, making
it impossible to dig a grave, and so Sophia Dorothea’s coffined remains were
packed off to the cellars to wait for spring. By then, George had relented, and
the mother of his heir was properly – if discreetly – buried in Celle, her home.

In 1727, George died, some say as a consequence of his
mistreated wife’s curse. While there is a pleasing symmetry to that, I find it
hard to believe. Whatever the case, his treatment of Sophia Dorothea had
permanently soured his relationship with his son, further compounded by how
cruelly George separated his grandchildren from their parents. Not, all in all, a
nice man, in my opinion. Nope, not at all.

So what happened to our young dashing count? Was he bought
off with gold? Did he perhaps stumble down a staircase and break his neck? Or was
he, in fact, murdered on George I’s orders? We will never know, not for sure.
However, it is said that during World War II, the old Hanoverian castle was badly
hit by bombs. During the clearing up, a sealed closet was discovered, in which
were found bones – and fragments of a heavy brown cloak... Murder, I say.
Murder most foul.

The 300 odd letters between Sophia Dorothea and her Swedish
count still survive and can be found in Lund’s University library. Written in
code, they display a couple headily in love, just as headily attracted to each
other. However, Sophia Dorothea always maintained that she had not, in fact,
crossed the dividing line between wanting to bed her handsome lover and
actually doing so. Personally, in view of what came after, I hope they did, but once again, we will never
know.

All images from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

~~~~~~~~~~~

Anna Belfrage is the successful author of eight published books, all of them part of The Graham Saga. Set in 17th century Scotland, Virginia and Maryland, this is the story of Matthew Graham and his wife, Alex Lind - two people who should never have met, not when she was born three centuries after him.

Presently, Anna is hard at work with The King’s Greatest Enemy, a series set in the 1320s featuring Adam de Guirande, his wife Kit, and their adventures and misfortunes in connection with Roger Mortimer’s rise to power. The first instalment, In the Shadow of the Storm, was published on November 1, 2015.

For more information about Anna and her books, please visit her website. If not on her website, Anna can mostly be found on her blog.

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Britain leaves us awed by ancient castles, palaces and museums. History pours out a legacy of battles, a developing monarchy, a structured class system, court-inspired behaviors and fashions, artwork and writings that have created a love for all things British. Some of us feel that we must fuel the fire~ we have come together to share our historical work and to reach out to our much appreciated readers. Please enjoy our posts about the history of England, Scotland, Wales and all the Empire.

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